Between 2009 and 2013 Great Neck, New York-based Pharmalogical, Inc. grossed $17 million selling black market imported medicine, among them cancer treatments, Intrauterine Devices (IUDs), and Botox, to U.S. medical practices who believed they were buying FDA-approved products. The company’s president, William “Liam” Scully, was found guilty of these activities in 2015, but the Second Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the conviction in 2017. Last year, he was re-sentenced to 32 months in prison.

According to court documents, Scully founded Pharmalogical with a colleague, Shahrad Rodi Lameh. They began selling imported Botox and Mirena IUDs under the name Medical Device King (MDK) in 2009 and expanded into the oncology market in late-2010 or early-2011. On May 24, 2012, FDA agents searched MDK’s offices while hunting for the source of counterfeit versions of the cancer drug Avastin. MDK stopped selling oncology drugs after the FDA visit, but Scully continued oncology sales through a new company, Taranis Medical Group, without Lameh’s knowledge.

On May 13, 2013, the FDA warned almost 800 medical clinics that they may have purchased counterfeit versions of Altuzan (a Turkish medicine that contains the same active ingredient as Avastin) from MDK in late 2011. MDK purchased products from Ozay Pharmaceuticals, which had supplied Richards Pharma with counterfeit versions of the Altuzan, some of which, upon testing, had no active ingredient.

Scully went to trial where, the Justice Department reported, 40 witnesses testified that he deceived doctors into believing that he was selling FDA-approved medicines rather than “unapproved products imported through a series of unidentified middlemen in Turkey and elsewhere.” On November 12, 2015, a jury found Scully guilty of 64 felonies. He was sentenced to five years in prison, and to pay $900,000 in forfeitures.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated Scully's conviction in December 2017 because the lower court had excluded evidence showing he sought legal advice about importing drugs with foreign labels. After he pleaded guilty to one felony count of introducing a misbranded drug into interstate commerce in May 2018, Scully was sentenced to 32 months in prison (17 months after time served) the following October.